Memry Corporation ranks as the largest independent manufacturer of Nitinol
components to the medical device industry and the largest producer of
Nitinol tubing, wire, strip, and components. Nitinol is a shape memory
alloy able to undergo severe changes in form and return to its original
shape. The company offers manufacturers a total solution concept that
incorporates design, prototype development, production, and the
manufacture of shape memory alloy parts. In the medical device market,
Memry's Nitinol and polymer-based components are used in
interventional devices such as guide wires, catheters, and delivery
systems. Memry owns manufacturing facilities in Bethel, Connecticut, and
Menlo Park, California.

Origins

Memry went through several meaningful transitions during its first decades
in business, shifting its strategy three times before finding the niche it
occupied at the beginning of the 21st century. The company was
incorporated in 1981 in Stamford, Connecticut, a venture started by a
group of scientists intent on developing commercial applications for the
emerging shape memory alloy business. Shape memory referred to a
material's ability to change its shape and return to its original
shape, an ability that promised to have many uses in industrial and
commercial applications. Initially, the founding scientists concentrated
on a family of copper-based shape memory alloys, deriving much of their
financial backing from federal research grants. The company spent much of
its first decade experimenting with copper-based alloys, experiencing the
trial-and-error ups and downs common in any emerging technological field.
By the late 1980s, the scientists realized they were on the wrong track, a
discovery that prompted Memry's first significant change in
strategy.

Memry's lead scientists abandoned further work on copper-based
shape memory alloys when they realized the material was not capable of
performing well in the long term. Copper-based alloys could not answer the
demanding needs of certain applications, but the company's
technical crew knew of an alloy that could stand up to the rigors of
commercial and industrial demands. During the early 1960s, a new alloy was
discovered, a material that drew its name from its birthplace. Nitinol
became the answer to Memry's problems with copper-based alloys, a
material that was almost equal parts nickel and titanium. Nitinol's
name was created from combining the first two letters of nickel and
titanium with the acronym for the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL),
where the alloy was discovered in the early 1960s. Nitinol had special,
unique properties that allowed it to alter its shape in response to
thermal or mechanical changes, but return to its original form, a
crystalline phase change known as "thermoelastic martensitic
transformation."

Once Memry's engineers found a shape memory alloy that could
perform well, the company's commercial activity picked up pace.
Beginning around 1989, when the company changed its name from Memory
Metals Inc. to Memry Corporation, it began developing products for
customers, distributing its goods through its own sales team and through
agreements with other agencies. The company also strengthened its metal
machining business with the acquisition of a more than century-old
Worcester, Massachusetts-based company. In 1990, the company acquired
Wright Machine Corp., which increased its manufacturing capacity,
particularly for internally developed valve products. Memry's
involvement in developing its own shape memory alloy products lasted only
briefly, ending in the early 1990s when the company embarked on its second
meaningful change in strategy. The first strategic transition had been
triggered by a product, the discovery of Nitinol. The impetus for the
second change in focus came from an individual, an executive named James
G. Binch.

New Leadership in the Early 1990s

Binch received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University before
earning a master's degree in business from the Wharton School at
the University of Pennsylvania. His career included a stint at Champion
Building Products, where he served as vice-president of planning, and a
seven-year stay at Combustion Engineering, where he rose to the posts of
president and chief operating officer. Binch's introduction to
Memry came after he embarked on a new career as a merchant banker. In
1987, he founded Harbour Investment Corporation, which became a major
shareholder of Memry, eventually leading to his appointment as chief
executive officer of Memry in 1992.

Once at the helm, Binch had the power to make changes as he saw fit. He
believed the company lacked focus because, according to the February 19,
2001 issue of the
Fairfield County Business Journal,
"It was going in too many directions." Binch implemented a
restructuring program that changed the way the company conducted its
business, ushering in a period of development that would see the company
realize its first significant growth. For more than its first decade of
business, Memry never reached the $1 million-in-sales mark, operating as a
very small enterprise with fewer than 20 employees. The company began to
develop into a more prominent commercial entity after Binch abandoned the
company's strategy of developing proprietary end-user products and
recast Memry as a supplier to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). In
the years ahead, Binch focused on offering semi-finished materials and
engineered components fabricated from Nitinol, selling such goods to
manufacturers involved in industrial, commercial, and defense markets.

The switch from manufacturing finished products to fabricating
semi-finished products and components took several years to complete. By
1995, the company still employed fewer than 20 people and it continued to
generate less than $1 million in annual revenue, but the spark that
ignited the company's growth arrived the following year. In June
1996, Binch bought the electronics division of Raychem Corporation, a
purchase that capped the restructuring program begun four years earlier.
The acquisition involved Raychem's intellectual property and its
manufacturing assets related to its shape memory business, giving Memry a
production plant in Menlo Park, California. The purchase also included
ties to the medical device market, which Raychem had served before Memry
acquired its shape memory assets. A focus on the medical device market
represented the company's third significant change in strategy, one
that would propel the Binchled organization toward unprecedented growth.

Focusing on the Medical Device Market
in the Late 1990s

During the second half of the 1990s, the medical device industry began
turning increasingly to shape memory alloy-based components to manufacture
its products. Shape memory alloys excelled in certain commercial and
industrial applications, proving their worth as the underwire for bras, as
components of cellular phone antennas, and to make flexible eyeglass
frames. The unique behavior of Nitinol—its ability to undergo
severe shape changes and fully recover when triggered—found
practical use in the medical device market as well. By using shape memory
alloy in a medical instrument, the instrument's shape and size
could be contorted and returned to its original form once deployed in the
patient's body, which aided in the medical community's drive
for minimally invasive procedures and instruments. Binch saw a future for
Memry in the medical devices market, one in which the demand was strong
and the profits were high. For example, one-quarter inch of Nitinol wire
cost $30 per pound, the price Memry paid to bring the alloy into its
manufacturing facilities. After using the Nitinol to create a component
for a medical device, the price of the shape memory alloy increased
exponentially, jumping as high as $3,000 per pound.

As the late 1990s progressed, Binch reshaped the company again, focusing
his efforts on the medical device market. In 1997, two deals one month
apart reflected the decision to move forward in one direction while
retreating from another direction. In April, Memry reached a two-year,
exclusive purchase order agreement with United States Surgical Corporation
for the supply of medical instrument assemblies. The following month,
Memry announced it had reached an agreement to sell all of the machinery
and equipment belonging to Wright Machine Corp., deeming the subsidiary
outside the scope of the company's new focus on becoming a
high-technology materials and assembly concern.

The new version of Memry that was taking shape during the late 1990s was a
much larger commercial enterprise, one whose growing stature attracted
attention from beyond the borders of its home state of Connecticut. Thanks
in large part to the Raychem acquisition, the company's annual
sales leaped from $1.1 million in 1996 to $11.5 in 1997. Revenues nearly
doubled the following year, as Binch pressed forward with his
restructuring program. In October 1998, Memry completed another major
acquisition, setting its sights on overseas assets to bolster its Nitinol
capabilities. The company acquired Advanced Materials and Technologies,
N.V. (AMT), a Belgium-based company that ranked as one of the largest
providers of shape memory alloys to customers in Europe. The addition of
AMT, which owned a 15,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in
Herk-de-Stad, coupled with the Raychem purchase made Memry one of the
largest producers of Nitinol components in the world—an impressive
standing for a company that several years earlier had been unable to
generate more than $1 million in revenue.

Company Perspectives:

Memry's objective is to become the world leader in developing
and processing shape memory materials with high quality and
significant user value.

Memry in the 21st Century

At the dawn of the 21st century, Memry was at a crossroads of sorts,
firmly committed to being a supplier of Nitinol-based
components, but serving both the medical device market and markets
outside the medical industry. The focus on serving medical device
manufacturers had grown sharper as the late 1990s progressed, culminating
with a small yet symbolic acquisition completed in 1999. In March, Memry
purchased Wrentham, Massachusetts-based Wire Solutions, Inc., a maker of
specialized micro-coils and guide wire components for the medical device
industry. "This acquisition, although small," Binch
explained in a statement released March 24, 1999 by
PR Newswire,
"continues Memry's drive into the broader application of
its design, engineering, and manufacturing skills for the medical device
market." The purchase of Wire Solutions represented one more step
toward serving the medical device market, and it was followed by a
significant step away from serving OEM manufacturers involved in the
automotive, telecommunications, defense, and other, nonmedical,
industries. In February 2001, Binch decided to sell Memry Europe, the
business formerly known as AMT, shifting the balance between a medical and
nonmedical focus strongly toward the medical side.

"Over the past four quarters, we have experienced approximately
$750,000 in ordinary operating losses directly attributable to the
European operation. With this transaction, we will have eliminated the
ongoing financial drain." Binch's statement, taken from a
February 19, 2001 interview with the
Fairfield County Business Journal,
explained part of the reason to cut the former AMT free from Memry.
"The real reason the European business had not turned the corner in
terms of profits," Binch continued, "was with our
company-wide emphasis on medical applications. We did not develop the
commercial base necessary for other applications." Memry Europe,
within three years of its acquisition, had come to represent the
company's past. At Memry's headquarters in Brookfield, 85
percent of the components manufactured were designed for medical
applications. In Belgium, 90 percent of the Nitinol components were made
for commercial and industrial applications not related to medical devices.
The focus of the company, sharpened by the divestiture of its European
subsidiary, was clearer by this point. In the years ahead, Memry intended
to invest nearly all of its efforts in making the laparoscopic surgical
assemblies, medical stent materials and components, and catheters and
guide wires wanted by medical device manufacturers.

As Binch celebrated his tenth anniversary at Memry, the influence of his
reign was easily discernible in both financial and strategic terms. When
he joined the company, Memry had discovered the material it would use but
not the market for the material. Financially, the gains achieved under his
rule were enormous. When Binch joined Memry, the company collected
revenues in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. By the mid-2000s, the
company was generating roughly $35 million in revenue, earning in profit
by a factor of more than ten what it had grossed a decade earlier. Binch
made Memry a recognizable player in the business world, and he was
committed to further developing the company within the parameters it had
taken him nearly a decade to define. The company's acquisition of
Putnam Plastics Corporation in 2004 reinforced Binch's strategy for
Memry, giving the company a broader platform upon which to build in the
future. Putnam, acquired in November, made plastic components for medical
devices such as guide wires, catheters, delivery systems, and other
interventional devices. Binch, in an interview with the
Fairfield County Business Journal
conducted on November 29, 2004, explained the reasoning behind the
purchase, likely not the last acquisition of its type as Memry prepared
for the future. "Both of us supply critical products for many of
the same device companies, sometimes for the same application," he
noted. "For example, we may make a Nitinol self-expanding stent
while Putnam may manufacture the shaft for its delivery catheter. Our new
combined company gives us greater leveraging in penetrating the market and
expanding the customer base."